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Lance Armstrong Retires From Cycling

Lance Armstrong, the seven-time Tour de France winner who is the target of a federal investigation into doping in cycling, announced Wednesday that he had retired from his sport — this time for good.

Armstrong, who is 39 and a cancer survivor, said he was leaving to spend more time with his family — he has five children — and to focus his efforts in his campaign against cancer.

Those are the same reasons Armstrong used in 2005, when he announced that the Tour that summer would be his final race. After winning the Tour for the seventh consecutive time, he spent three and a half years away from racing before coming back. In 2009, Armstrong returned to the Tour, the race where he made his name. After a grueling three weeks, competing against adversaries nearly half his age, he stood on the podium in Paris once again. He finished third; his Astana teammate Alberto Contador of Spain won.

“I can’t say I have any regrets,” Armstrong told The Associated Press on Tuesday. “It’s been an excellent ride. I really thought I was going to win another Tour. Then I lined up like everybody else and wound up third.”

Armstrong raced at the Tour last year and finished 23rd after a series of uncharacteristic crashes. But he had a lot on his mind then. During the Tour, a federal grand jury in Los Angeles had convened to hear evidence in a possible criminal case against him and some of his associates.

Jeff Novitzky, the federal agent who was the lead investigator in the Bay Area Laboratory Co-operative case, is in charge of the inquiry into whether Armstrong had defrauded his United States Postal Service team by doping.

Last spring, Floyd Landis — one of Armstrong’s former teammates on the Postal Service squad — publicly accused Armstrong and others on the team of using banned drugs and methods. Landis’s claims have since been confirmed by other riders on the team, according to several of those riders who did not want their names used because the investigation is continuing.

“I can’t control what goes on in regards to the investigation,” Armstrong said to The A.P. “That’s why I hire people to help me with that.” Armstrong has a team of lawyers, including Mark Fabiani, a former White House special counsel who specializes in crisis communication, working on his behalf while the federal investigation continues. In the meantime, he has tried to go on with life as usual.

Now with more time on his hands, Armstrong is set to co-chair an initiative in California pushing for a tobacco tax that will directly benefit cancer research. He was asked to be the face of the campaign, taping television commercials and radio spots and starring on billboards to promote the issue to California voters, said Doug Ulman, chief executive of the Lance Armstrong Foundation.

Armstrong will try to carpet the state, attending grass-roots events and visiting universities and cancer centers to discuss the need for more funding for cancer research, Ulman said.

“The fact that he will have more time and flexibility to focus on the cause is great,” Ulman said, adding that the foundation joined the campaign’s coalition last summer.

The initiative might be on the ballot as early as June, so Armstrong may quickly become a familiar face in the state where the citizens on a federal grand jury will decide his fate. The timing for an indictment or dismissal in the Armstrong inquiry is unknown. Still, many in the cycling world thought Armstrong would be tackling a cycling route — not a campaign trail — through California this spring.

Photo

Armstrong said he wanted to focus on his family and on anti-cancer initiatives.Credit
Stefano Rellandini/Reuters

Armstrong, who has homes in Austin, Tex., and Aspen, Colo., was expected to ride this May with his RadioShack team in the Tour of California — the most prestigious road cycling event in the United States. Race organizers said there was a huge increase in attendance when he raced there the past two years.

But after a career that made Armstrong one of the world’s most famous athletes, his final ride as a professional was not on home soil — it was in Australia in January, at the Tour Down Under. He finished 67th.

Andrew Messick, the sports director for AEG, the company that runs the Tour of California, said less than two weeks ago that he had not received a commitment from Armstrong to compete. He was told that Armstrong “didn’t know.”

USA Cycling will forward the letter to the United States Anti-Doping Agency, which then will stop drug-testing Armstrong. But even in retirement, any antidoping investigations into Armstrong’s past will remain open, according to the World Anti-Doping Agency.

Armstrong, whose success ushered in a boom in cycling in the United States, said he would like to leave that part of his life behind. Next up is a new phase, where riding his bike will be limited to fund-raisers and general fitness. But sports competitions are not out of the question: Fabiani said Armstrong was considering competing in the Ironman triathlon in Hawaii next fall, but had not made a commitment yet.

“In 10 years time,” Armstrong said Tuesday, “if I’m sitting around saying, ‘I was so strong on L’Alpe-d’Huez in 2001,’ then I got a problem.”

A version of this article appears in print on February 17, 2011, on Page B14 of the New York edition with the headline: Armstrong Retires From Cycling for a Second Time. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe